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New Bigfoot Thermal Video Impresses Researchers (but not me)

It seems like every year or so, there is some new “evidence” of Bigfoot. Usually it’s some grainy video of something, that could be almost anything. Once it was a gorilla costume in a cooler. But usually these finds turn out to be hoaxes or misidentifications. The most recent video making buzz in the Bigfoot community is the so called “Squeaky thermal video” by Michael Greene. It was taken by Mr. Greene on a thermal imaging camera, in Uwharrie National Forest, N.C. Earth Times has the full story. My thoughts will follow…

The Patterson/Gimlin footage

Uwharrie, NC (PRWEB) — ”This is the most important footage of a Sasquatch since Paterson/ Gimlin film taken over 40 years ago,” said Matthew Moneymaker, head of the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization ( BFRO)as he introduced guest speaker Michael Greene to a crowd of 250 Bigfoot researchers in Yakima, Washington, at an invitation only tribute to Bob Gimlin.

In 1967 The Paterson/ Gimlin film of a Sasquatch striding across a creek in northern California made headlines around the world.

Since then there has been only dubious additional footage, usually crudely made fakes.

Until now.

In April 28th,2009, some three minutes of video of a Sasquatch were taken through a thermal imager (FLIR) by Michael Greene, in the Uwharrie National Forest, NC.

This footage, known as “The Squeaky Thermal” was first shown at Bob Gimlin’s birthday party 2 weeks later. It was viewed with wild applause and a heartfelt “Thank you, thank you so much” from Bob Gimlin, who was finally receiving some well deserved vindication of his efforts so long ago.

Michael Greene is the retired Chief of a State Fraud Investigations Bureau. has a Master’s Degree in Psychology, and is a Court Qualified Questioned Documents Expert ,and former Investigator for the Public Defender’s Office .His hobby for the last 20 years has been searching for proof of this elusive beast. This quest has taken him from glacier fields in the Yukon, to a giant meteor crater in northern Quebec, the Everglades of Florida and the rain forests of the Pacific Northwest.

In 2008 he briefly saw a Sasquatch in the Uwharrie National Forest , and spent the next year repeatedly camping at the spot, trying to encourage its return and gain some semblance of its trust.

“Over and over I left out bananas, apples, peanut butter, Zagnut bars, and little squeaking bathtub toys that my grandchildren like to play with. Hence the name ‘Squeaky’, one of the toys the Bigfoot took. Sometimes things would be taken , most times not. At the time I could only record for about 2 hours, the battery life of the thermal , so a lot of the night went unrecorded. This is definitely a patient man’s game.

“A thermal imager sees only images made by heat. FLIR, or Forward Looking Infra Red, is most familiar to viewers of police reality shows like COPS, where a fugitive is seen from a helicopter as a white image, running through backyards. You cannot fool a thermal imager as it is recording only the heat signature of what it sees. Thus, a man in a costume would look splotchy and irregular, as his costume would suppress the body heat to varying degrees, unlike a naked man, or Bigfoot, which would appear primarily as a solid color.”

Greene continues, “Around 11:30 on the night of April 28th, 2009 I was setting up the thermal recording stuff, to try hiding it in the back of my Toyota Highlander when I heard movement in the woods down in the area I expected it to show up. On an impulse I took the thermal imager and put it on a tripod, with the DVR ( Digital Video Recorder) on the ground next to it. Then I got in the car and drove away, leaving my campsite very obviously deserted . I drove to the one entrance to the area ( which had no one else in it) and parked for two hours ( the approximate life of the thermal’s battery ). When I returned the battery was indeed dead, but the bait was gone.

“On reviewing the tape I saw that about half an hour after I drove away, the creature very cautiously approaches, crawling up the hill behind the stump, then reaches up with its right arm and grabs the Zagnut bar. Then it crawls backwards , moving almost out of sight and moves off to the right of the screen. A few seconds later, perhaps emboldened by its success, it reappears on the right side of the screen and moves, standing upright, to behind a tree, where it slowly sways back and forth, giving the viewer a good idea of its enormous bulk. This swaying behavior has been repeatedly reported by other witnesses. The height I estimate at around 7 ½ feet, but it is hard to exactly pin down as the ground slopes down , away from the viewer so one cannot exactly tell where it’s feet hit the ground.

“My website, www.bushloper.net, gives a thorough explanation of the area, and how it was filmed and a reenactment of the Sasquatch’s movements by me, wearing only shorts, taken from the same spot, with the same equipment. You can see the difference, and I’m 6’5” tall and 190 pounds .By comparison, this thing is huge. The website also contains the complete Squeaky Thermal video (Copyrighted).

The BFRO at one point had an excerpt of the video on their YouTube Channel, but it has since been removed. I’m not sure why. If you go to Mr. Greene’s website, you can only view the video if you pay $2.00. I actually bought the video, as I was naturally curious (and hey, it’s only $2). I would post an excerpt or screen shot, except that Mr. Greene sates on his site:

Mike Greene’s Squeaky thermal video is now avalible for download in the .WMV format. Each download costs $2.00 US dollars which will be paid to PayPal. The video once downloaded may be viewed forever. If anything is at fault you must pay again to download the file. The footage is governed under US COPYRIGHT LAWS even though the watermark may be blurry. Mike has spent over $5,000.00 in documentation (lawyers included) to reserve this right and if it is found reposted on the web or in any other form you will surely be prosecuted!!! Please enjoy Mike’s video if only because he has spent a lot of time and cash in this pursuit, not pastime.

So yeah, I don’t feel like being sued, and he seems pretty serious about litigation. But again, I have to wonder why. If he feels that this is legitimate proof of Bigfoot, and quality proof of Bigfoot, why charge money for people to view it? And why so blatantly threaten a lawsuit against anyone who posts any part of the video, in any form? I would think that any serious researcher would want the evidence out there to as many people as possible, so other researchers and scientists could confirm or deny what he captured.

That being said, this video, like so many others before it (except perhaps the Patterson/Gimlin footage), is grainy and ambiguous. The supposed Bigfoot is behind trees and crawling behind a stump for most of the video. You can definitely tell it’s bipedal at points, and the head looks like the typical conical shape reported in Bigfoot sightings. But when all is said and done, it’s still just a grainy, blurry, black and white video of a small figure in the distance moving around. It could be a man in a costume. Or it could be Bigfoot. I wasn’t all that impressed by it. And I’m always a little suspicious when people charge money for their “evidence.” I understand wanting to copyright it, but the fact that the excerpts on both the BFRO YouTube Channel as well as Mr. Greene’s website are now missing makes things even more suspicious. Mr. Greene seems otherwise to have pretty impressive credentials. What are they afraid of? I believe in the possibility of Bigfoot. But until we get a body, a live specimen, or at least some convincing DNA, the videos are just one more piece of the puzzle.